He Swore Flowers Would Kill Him, Then Came Home Smelling of Roses novel · Chapter 5 of 32
Chapter 5: The Gathering
The seeds came up in six days.
Green threads of thyme and feverfew pushed through the wet black dirt, and the lavender followed behind them.
Rhett saw them on Wednesday from the kitchen window.
He said nothing. He turned around, took his jacket and left the house.
He slept at the pack hall for the next three nights, and he told everyone he needed to rest his head.
His mother said so too, loudly, in the market. She said I was "testing his health."
The pack women gave me looks in the street, half pity and half warning.
I did not mind. I had a plan, and it needed Saturday.
Every autumn Cedar Hollow held the Gathering, a feast in the pack hall.
Every family came, and every elder, and a delegation from the Redfern pack across the river.
Eight hundred wolves in one room.
"I can run the screen," Pia said that Thursday, sitting cross-legged on my kitchen floor. "The hall projector takes anything. I'll load your video onto the laptop in the booth."
"If Maureen catches you, she'll strip your apprenticeship."
"Then I'll be unemployed and right." Pia grinned. "I'll sit by the cable. When you stand up, I press play."
"Only if I say yes," I said.
"Only if you say yes."
I was not going to ask her for more than that.
On Saturday I dressed in the green wool dress I had worn to my own mating ceremony and braided my hair back from my face.
I pulled a bit of thyme from the garden bed and rubbed it between my palms until the scent came up.
My wolf rose inside me, and for the first time in years I felt her under my skin.
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